Hi, I'm CobaltCedar

Hi everyone! I’ve been on Prozac for 20 years and, in August I felt I’d reached a point where I no longer needed it. I worked really hard to build other things into my life that help me with my mental health, so now is the time to be free of the drugs! I’m in the UK and, when I went to the doctor for advice on how to come off Prozac, they gave me the standard set of instructions. For the first month reduce from 20 mg to 10 mg. Then for the second month alternate between 10 mg one day to nothing the next before stopping altogether at the end of the month. The first month had its moments in terms of side effects, but they did settle by the end of the month so I wanted to carry on. However, I felt uneasy about the rather brutal 10mg / 0mg / 10mg / 0mg I had been told to do, so I asked the doctor for liquid Prozac. I wasn’t given any specific guidance on how to taper down to zero over the coming month, so I made up my own regime of reducing by the same tiny amount every day. I got down to 3.2 mg and suddenly a host of withdrawal symptoms slammed into me like a wall. Depression, panic, brain zaps, GI issues. I decided to stick at 3.2 mg and hope for it to get better but here I am nearly 3 weeks later still struggling. I did some reading and decided to increase the dose again to 5 mg to try and meet my withdrawal symptoms at a more comfortable level, stay on that for as long as necessary and then start a super slow taper from there. We are told never to do anything like this without the supervision of our doctor so I dutifully made an appointment for the beginning of this week. I was truly shocked by this guy’s attitude. He didn’t seem to understand the difference between treating the original illness many years ago and raising a tiny dose to address physical withdrawal symptoms. He said the only dose he could possibly support was going back to 10 mg because he said that was the minimum ‘therapeutic dose’. I tried to explain about hyperbolic tapering but he wasn’t interested, just referred me to a table on the wall showing the guidelines they work by for reducing different types of ADs. I could see my original brutal two month plan on there! If I had been in an even darker place that doctor could’ve tipped me over the edge! It’s utterly shocking. So I’m going next week to see the other doctor that gave me the liquid Prozac to talk it through, as she seems more open-minded. Fingers crossed! I have upped my dose to 5 mg now and really hope it helps to settle my symptoms, including diarrhoea and bloating which have now joined the party. I’d be so grateful for advice on these GI issues as I find them very disconcerting. So happy to have found this community